Reading Roars!

You are browsing the archives of 2008 January.

The Oracle’s Santa Fe is to reopen as Ha! Ha!  Ha ha, I think not.  I liked Santa Fe. I liked its bar and Mexican beers such as Negro Modelo.  I liked its zingy food.  I liked the dramatic backdrop in the Gents of a solitary desert road stretching far into the distance.  I liked [...]

And finally, the Pun of the Week prize goes to the Evening Post for their story about a local Page Three Idol contestant, who hopes to win a contract with The Sun:
A Reading teenager is keeping abreast of her career by getting to the last 16 of a modelling competition.
The article looks enormously popular on [...]

I’ve been doing a bit of spring (winter?) cleaning on this blog.  A number of other sites, mostly blogs, appear to have “died”, so I’ve deleted links pointing to these ghostly apparitions.  It’s a bit sad (only a bit) as these were once vibrant communities - and now they are gone.  Does any reader know [...]

Local author Julie Cohen, who writes sexy fiction for Headline Little Black Dress and Harlequin/Mills & Boon, has set her latest steamy book, One Night Stand, in Reading. Impressive enough. I was also impressed to discover her sparkling blog (it really is sparkling - see for yourself).
In a post published earlier in the [...]

The University of Reading and Henley Management College have agreed in principle to merge to create a new “world-class” (those words again: I’m seeing them everywhere these days) business school.
This makes sense to me.   Henley offers top MBA programmes and Reading has its brilliant ICMA Centre, providing world class finance training.  Let’s bang the two [...]

First Great Western. What’s great about them? Guards on FGW trains have voted to hold a 48 hour strike, prompting the following words on I Hate First Great Western blog:
Sometimes the words “piss-up” and “brewery” come to mind when I think of the way that FGW try to run their bit of the [...]

Much has been said in the papers recently about the rail chaos caused by engineering works and above-inflation increase in rail fares.  Will we (those who pay to use the trains) see improvements in 2008?  Please excuse my pessimism, but I doubt it.  Read the excerpt below from the Thunderer column in The Times.  Sound [...]

According to the Evening Post article ‘Foodie’ facelift for student pub, another town centre watering hole is giving itself a makeover. In a bid to target more locals, the popular student pub Upin Arms is to go upmarket by offering gourmet steaks and burgers (21 types, allegedly), installing new seating and adding Frulis, Beck’s Vier [...]